Talk:List of slave owners

Tens of thousands of people have owned slaves over the history of humanity. Let's keep it shorter

This list is obviously only for notable slave owners (otherwise it would be against Wikipedia policy). Plus, it says "notable" right in the lead section. No confusion. --brian0918™ 01:39, 30 Apr 2005 (UTC)

• Added a buncha slave-ownin' Pharoahs for you. -- 8^D BD2412^gab 02:03, 2005 Apr 30 (UTC)

what the...? this is much like a List of people who were married, for substantial periods of history. Let's vfd it, this is leading nowhere. dab (ᛏ) 29 June 2005 08:26 (UTC)

Yeah, but only notable people who were married... :-) --Uppland 29 June 2005 08:45 (UTC)

If we can have a list of notable people who were slaves, it seems like we should also be able to have a list of notable people who were slave owners. Besides, since when has list length been a problem for Wikipedia? Too many trees wasted? --brian0918™ 29 June 2005 13:11 (UTC)

Brian0918 is quite correct here - we have many lists on mundane categories that are limited to notable occupants of that category. This is understood. -- BD2412 ^talk June 29, 2005 13:47 (UTC)

14 years later, I tend to agree much of this article is a bit of a lump. To document individuals who owned slaves at times and in places when it was ordinary for affluent individuals to own slaves is a bit like List of people who were married.

One thing we might do is restrict it to people who documentedly owned slaves after abolitionism was making progress - for example, after the 1772 Somersett Case? Pinkbeast (talk) 15:36, 11 April 2019 (UTC)

Dumbest wiki page ever

Delete this. It's a testament to wikipedia's bad reputation. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.131.255.88 (talk) 20:26, 8 May 2017 (UTC)

I agree, this article is pointless. For most of human history -- excepting the last few hundred years -- slavery was the norm. An authoritative list of even all the notable people who owned slaves at one time in their lives would run to tens of thousands of entries. For starters, since the list already includes a bunch of Pharaohs it would also have to include pretty much every Hellenistic Greek whose name we still know; virtually all of the nobility of the Roman Empire and the Roman Republic; every European, Asian, and African leader of note from prehistory up through at least the late 18th century; Native American tribal leaders (North, South and Central America) up to the age of colonization ...

As someone pointed out, it's like having a "list of notable people who were married".

It can never be sufficiently comprehensive to be of any use.

Delete it.

74.95.43.249 (talk) 21:07, 30 May 2018 (UTC)

And really who cares? It is just a topic to make the colored race scar the entire history of humankind for the act of enslaving others for their own needs. The colored people WERE SOLD AND ABUSED BY THEIR OWN PEOPLE IN AFRICA and could care less about where these people ended up. That is a historical fact. It had so much to do with greed and the almighty money. 73.138.87.188 (talk) 19:45, 18 January 2024 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Deletion process Wtmitchell (talk) (earlier Boracay Bill) 23:38, 30 May 2018 (UTC)

THANK YOU, TOTALLY AGREE...........THAT WAS THE WAY OF THE WORLD AT THAT TIME AND HUNDREDS OF COLORED PEOPLE OWNED SLAVES 73.138.87.188 (talk) 19:41, 18 January 2024 (UTC)

Shorten list

I'd like to revisit the discussion above and once again suggest shortening the list to slave owners after abolitionism emerged as a political force. There is no point in listing every affluent notable Roman. Pinkbeast (talk) 09:37, 3 August 2019 (UTC)

•    Agree. (…sorta...) It’s be a long while (can’t say exactly: obviously no more than, say roughly 17 years ago when I started editing as user:Garyo (Oh, yeah, at the least that user page got deleted; huh, mebbe my talk and/or edit history as well ... I’d say “com si, com sa” ... if I still were confident about its meaning...) a helpful, and obviously trusted, early-generational at-least-admin- equivalent said something like I shouldn't worry about the judgement of my admin-nominator to let our colleagues have a chance to say yes or no. Got my mop&bucket. But within the last 9 or so months, I had Garyo disabled, and GaryoA allocated to me instead, lest I be mistaken for, well, my earlier self.
  <!>   I agree as to the relevance, but deny the definitiveness, as the “not” part and as to the “but instead” part. WP:Notability is neither assured by that would-be inclusion, nor ruled out by the would-be exclusion.
     All editors have authority -- AFAIK, by default -- to revert additions, deletions, or other edits, and should have their use of that authority tolerated, critiqued, and/or reverted (especially with ”warning” templates or ‘’ad hoc’’ links to policy), taking cues from the guidelines on civility.
     IMO, our colleague has groped admirably toward workable criteria, but

neither of those has value as a criterion, but only value as hints about “which ballpark” of deciding it is, that we are playing in. Including or excluding any particular slave from listing, based solely, or even significantly, on dates per se would be repugnant to the mission we have set. A more rational criterion would be the slave owners with articles who are in some way significantly notable ‘’by virtue of their relation to slaveholding. Pirates known to have notably sold captives into slavery might be an example. More to the point would be not the owners, but their de facto business plans.

• This proposal assumes that abolition is a relatively recent development. In fact, abolitionism has existed as long as slavery. China formally abolished slavery as early as 9 AD, and even in ancient Rome, where slavery was nearly ubiquitous, the institution was recognized as "contrary to nature." pburka (talk) 13:58, 14 July 2020 (UTC)

'Contrary to nature' does not equal abolitionist. And is there any evidence for abolitionism in ancient Egypt or Mesopotamia or any other Bronze Age society? If not then how can one claim it has existed as long as there has been slavery?LastDodo (talk) 10:51, 15 September 2020 (UTC)

Image in Infoxbox Implies Slaves were Guilty of Something

The image in the right-side Infobox of leg irons used on prisoners implies that slaves did something wrong and deserved to be slaves. I know this is subtle, but it screamed out at me...so maybe there are others who see this too. There are many appropriate images to place in this article; This is just not one of them. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 162.207.130.235 (talk) 20:21, 28 April 2020 (UTC)

Removal of reference #12

Reference #12 points to an article in the "Opinion" section of "The Globe and Mail". Since the author, altough a journalist, is not an expert on the subject, and it represent only his opinion, I don't think that it should be in the reference list. It does not [1]"directly support the information presented in the article". But itself cites a book written by an historian, Marcel Trudel. I think this reference #12 sould be removed.

Terminology

"Slave owner" implies that enslaved individuals can be "owned" like property. Instead "enslaver" or something similar should be used, to remove this implication that humans can be property, rather than the reality that the enslavers are enforcing the state slavery on other people. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.187.88.97 (talk) 16:41, 18 June 2020 (UTC)

That would be confusing to the majority of visitors to this page as it implies the slave holders were the original people who enslaved, which generally they were not.LastDodo (talk) 15:00, 30 June 2020 (UTC)

Emperors and the like

There are quite a few emperors, pharaohs, kings and other rulers on this list. While many of these people surely did own slaves personally, there were also many periods of history where slavery was restricted to states. I think we ought to distinguish between people who enslaved others in a private capacity vs. those who were served by people enslaved by the state they ruled. Some will argue that modern prison labor is a form of state slavery; will we be adding the recent governors of Arkansas to this list? pburka (talk) 17:30, 13 July 2020 (UTC)

It seems reasonable to separate rulers from individual owners. Guettarda (talk) 00:33, 15 July 2020 (UTC)

I think it would be problematic to make distinctions. In some time periods the state was the property of the ruler, in others there was a sharp division, and in many cases it was a murky mix of the two. I would say that if someone benefited personally from the labor of an enslaved person - if they were served by household slaves, or if slaves worked on plantations or businesses producing goods for them - then they are a "slave holder" (which might be a better term than "slave owner".) If a certain person was the "Wazir of Whatsit" and it is known that there were slaves at the court of Whatsit, I can't see not listing the Wazir.Brianyoumans (talk) 16:20, 15 July 2020 (UTC)

For many periods of history slave ownership was restricted to the state; personal ownership of slaves was rarer. In fact, even when the United States abolished slavery an exception was left for "punishment for crime," and convict leasing wasn't outlawed until 1941. Various public officials in the United States still benefit directly from prison laborers as servants today, and forced labor as state punishment is still common around the world. My feeling is that we should keep the criteria for inclusion fairly tight, and I'm leaning towards including only people who enslaved others (i.e. owned, traded, or commanded slaves) in a personal capacity. (I'm not trying to draw a moral distinction; but I'm concerned the list might become unmanageable if the criteria for inclusion are too open ended.) If we're going to include rulers, then I think we still need a reference directly supporting them personally owning slaves; we shouldn't infer it from their position. pburka (talk) 18:17, 15 July 2020 (UTC)

"forced labor as state punishment is still common around the world" The main article here is Unfree labour and not slavery. And which source would define those bound by such obligations as slaves? Dimadick (talk) 16:09, 16 July 2020 (UTC)

Sources like Current Affairs, Ad Week and Forbes, might, for example. That's why I'm suggesting that we not include people forced to labor by the state: it makes the scope of the list easier to manage. pburka (talk) 17:11, 16 July 2020 (UTC)

At the moment this list is unbalanced

hi all, I note that presently there are around 230 people listed in this article, of those about 190 lived 17th to 19th cents, and yet, for example, there are 1000s of romans at the category:Roman people by century, the majority of whom were slave owners (let alone all the other ancient peoples), who have not been included. Why the undue weight?". Coolabahapple (talk) 13:42, 16 July 2020 (UTC)

The vast majority of people who lived in the Roman Empire were not slave owners, of course, and we shouldn't assume that simply because someone lived at that time that they were. However the Romans in Wikipedia skew heavily towards the aristocracy, so are more likely to have enslaved people. Of the Romans currently included in this list, most are unreferenced and most of their individual articles don't mention them being slave owners. I support the inclusion of more ancient people who are documented by reliable sources as owning or trading slaves. I encourage you to add references for the ones currently in the list and to expand it with additional people supported by sources. As the list grows, we should consider organizing it by era or regime, perhaps, instead of alphabetically. (I think you could find other ways this list is unbalanced, too: of the 18th and 19th century inclusions, a disproportionate number are Black people who owned or traded slaves, presumably because their cases are more unusual and therefore more interesting.) pburka (talk) 14:27, 16 July 2020 (UTC)

'Of the Romans currently included in this list, most are unreferenced and most of their individual articles don't mention them being slave owners'. Nor do they mention they own clothes, yet we can be sure they did, for as with slaves, it would be truly remarkable if they did not, even more so that none would mention this. LastDodo (talk) 12:18, 26 July 2021 (UTC)

Penn

The comment about Penn being a slave owner "despite being a Quaker" is close to ahistorical - Penn died in 1718; the first Quaker meeting to condemn slavery in America was in 1711, and it was not widely discouraged among American Quakers until the 1750s. I haven't been able to figure out what the state of things was in England where Penn was, but abolition didn't really get much of a start there generally until about the 1770s. Brianyoumans (talk) 15:58, 18 July 2020 (UTC)

I'm not very familiar with the history of Quakerism and was trying to summarize the info on his page, particularly this: "Other Pennsylvania Quakers were more outspoken and proactive, being among the earliest fighters against slavery in America, led by Daniel Pastorius, founder of Germantown, Pennsylvania." as well as this sentence from the referenced newspaper: "It may be more surprising that our beloved Quaker founder, William Penn - a man who championed nonviolence and religious tolerance - was also a slave owner." Should we just drop the reference to Quakerism? pburka (talk) 16:10, 18 July 2020 (UTC)

I would drop the reference to Quakerism. If you read The Journal of John Woolman you can see that there were still plenty of slaveholding Quakers even in the 1740s. Pastorius may have begun the conversation in America with his piece in 1688, but it took a long time before his ideas were seriously considered. I don't think Penn was outside the Quaker mainstream at the time in being a slaveholder. Brianyoumans (talk) 20:05, 18 July 2020 (UTC)

 Done. pburka (talk) 22:12, 18 July 2020 (UTC)

Change the name to "List of NOTABLE slave owners)

The U.S. Census has the names of a few million slave owners, for example.Bilipede (talk) 22:25, 4 February 2021 (UTC)

Renaming the page wouldn't change anything. Wikipedia lists of people contain no WP:REDLINKs, and thus only people who are notable per WP:BIO. — Chrisahn (talk) 20:01, 10 February 2021 (UTC)

References

Who to include?

Historically, most royal rulers all around the globe over the centuries have owned slaves. They could potentially all be added to this article. For example, every signle Ottoman sultan could be inkluded in this list. So I am a little unsure who to include. Are this list only to include American slave ovners of American enslaved people? --Aciram (talk) 17:44, 19 May 2021 (UTC)

• No, slave owners worldwide should be included. Good sourcing is needed, which is why currently American slaveholders predominate on the list, but, if you look, you can find plenty of non-Americans. Brianyoumans (talk) 18:37, 19 May 2021 (UTC)
• See also "Emperors and the like" above. pburka (talk) 19:20, 19 May 2021 (UTC)

Be sure to include the well-known Monsanto family, who recently sold their business for $66 billion - seems like they should be among the first to pay reparations instead of sloughing their responsibilities off to innocent Americans 174.208.171.74 (talk) 21:07, 27 May 2023 (UTC)

Pruning

It's been nearly one year since this page was nominated for deletion. The result of the discussion was a clear consensus to keep, but several editors noted that the page was poorly referenced. I've spent some time over the last year correcting this by adding references and context to most of the entries. There are now over two hundred references, almost all to reliable and explicit secondary sources. For some I haven't been able to find strong, secondary sources demonstrating "a consensus of historical evidence" as required by the lead. In some cases I found only primary sources (e.g. census records) or implied slave ownership ("planter" usually means slave owner, but it could depend on context). I was able to find reliable and explicit sources for some of the listed monarchs and figures from antiquity, but not most of them. As the list is now mostly sourced, I plan to start removing the unreferenced entries; we can address any poorly referenced ones in a subsequent round. I plan to relocate any removed entries into a subsection of this comment. pburka (talk) 21:53, 7 July 2021 (UTC)

Unreferenced pruned entries

Extended content

A Gnaeus Julius Agricola (AD 40–93), Roman general. Aleijadinho (1730/1738–1814), Brazilian sculptor and architect. Askia Mohammad I (1493–1528), also known as Askia the Great, ruler of the Songhai Empire. Jeptha Atherton, North Carolina Atahualpa (1502–1533), last Inca Emperor. B Jacques Baby (1731–1789), French Canadian fur trader and landowner in Upper Canada William Wyatt Bibb (1781–1821), U.S. Congressman and 1st Governor of Alabama Brennus, a Gallic chieftain who led a sack of Rome in 387 BC C Augustus Caesar (63 BC–14 AD), Roman emperor Julius Caesar (100–44 BC), Roman dictator Caligula (AD 12–41), Roman emperor Daniel Clark (1766–1813), Louisiana politician Claudius (10 BC–54 AD), Roman emperor Philip Cook (1817–1894), U.S. Congressman and Confederate general Samuel Cooper (1798–1876), United States Army staff officer and Confederate general George W. Crawford (1798–1872), 21st U.S. Secretary of War, 38th Governor of Georgia, and U.S. Congressman D Richard Duncan (−1819) Landowner in New York state and Upper Canada and Upper Canada government official E Peter Early (1773–1818), U.S. Congressman and 28th Governor of Georgia F George Fitzhugh, a propagandist in the Antebellum South. Mariana Franko (d. after 1777), free person of color in Curaçao, in the Dutch West Indies. She is known as the central figure in a famous court case. G Edward James Gay (1816–1889), U.S. Congressional representative from Louisiana Ghezo, King of the Dahomey in present-day Benin from 1818 to 1858 H Hadrian (76–138 AD), Roman emperor Hannibal (247 – 183/181 BC), Carthaginian general during the Second Punic War. Thomas C. Hindman (1828–1868), American politician, Confederate general, and planter Horace (65–8 BC), Roman poet Eppa Hunton, U.S. Senator from Virginia and a Confederate officer L William Lowndes (1782–1822), American politician M Yaqub al-Mansur (1160–1199), the third Almohad Muslim Caliph. N Nero (37–68 AD), Roman emperor Nyberg -- This needs some sort of context P Philip III of Macedon (359–317 BC), king of Macedonia Pompey (106–48 BC) Ptolemy I of Egypt Ptolemy II of Egypt (309–246 BC) Ptolemy III of Egypt Ptolemy IV of Egypt Ptolemy V of Egypt Ptolemy VI of Egypt (185–145 BC) Ptolemy VII of Egypt Ptolemy VIII of Egypt (182–116 BC) Ptolemy IX of Egypt (143/142 – 81 BC) Ptolemy X of Egypt (117–51 BC) Ptolemy XI of Egypt Ptolemy XII of Egypt Ptolemy XIII of Egypt (62/61 – 47 BC) Ptolemy XIV of Egypt (60/59 – 44 BC) Ptolemy of Mauretania (13/9 BC – 40 AD) R J. G. M. Ramsey (1797–1884), American historian, physician, planter, and businessman. Stedman Rawlins (c. 1784–1830), English Governor of Saint Christopher (Saint Kitts) and plantation owner. William Barton Rogers (1804–1882), geologist, University of Virginia professor, founder of MIT. S Majid bin Said of Zanzibar (1837–1870), first Sultan of Zanzibar. Thuwaini bin Said, Sultan of Muscat and Oman (1821–1866) William K. Sebastian (1812–1865), American politician Ismail Ibn Sharif (1632–1727) Benjamin Smith (1717–1770), slave trader Solomon (990–931 BC), ancient King of Israel Peter Burwell Starke (1813–1888), politician and Confederate general Sulla (138–78 BC), Roman consul and dictator T Tegbessou King of the Kingdom of Dahomey from 1740 until 1774. Tewodros I, Emperor of Abyssinia from 1413 until 1414. Tiberius (42 BC – 37 AD) Roman emperor George Troup (1780–1856), U.S. Congressman and 32nd Governor of Georgia V James Vann (1766–1809), Cherokee chief and holder of more than one hundred slaves in Georgia.

 Done. I've removed about 60 unreferenced entries from the list and preserved them above. I encourage other editors to research them and, if you can find a reliable, secondary source, return them to the main list along with a few words of context and a citation. pburka (talk) 19:34, 10 July 2021 (UTC)

Huh

Look at that, Americans really think world is 400 yo 93.95.184.193 (talk) 17:58, 17 March 2022 (UTC)

I award you a kajillion internet points for your biting commentary on Americans, anonymous eastern-European editor. Will that be satisfactory? May we now return to productively documenting human history without wasting time on cultural snark? Felice Enellen (talk) 09:49, 4 July 2022 (UTC)

Semi-anonymous American here, and I happen to agree with the gist of the sentiment expressed above.

You've got a disproportionate number of American names on this list and there's little justification for that. You are not "documenting human history' -you are skewing the list to make it seem as if Americans were major players in the transatlantic slave trade.

A good 98% of the slaves sent to the Americas from 15th until the 19th Century landed in the Caribbean or South America, not the mainland of North America. To say nothing of the thousands of years of history that existed before the Age of Discovery.

Again, there really isn't any justification for loading the list up with American names -it makes the page look like it was edited by historically ignorant Americans. Jonathan f1 (talk) 20:06, 19 September 2022 (UTC)

I quickly reviewed the additions to the list since July 1 and found:

• Julius Caesar (Roman)
• Charles Caldwell (physician) (American)
• George Ellis (poet) (British)
• Eliza Fenwick (British)
• Thomas Jeremiah (American)
• George Long (scholar) (British)
• Hernando de Soto (Spanish)
• Juan de Zaldívar (Spanish)

—only 25% of new entries are Americans. I suspect any bias in this list is consistent with Wikipedia's overall biases: Americans and Anglophones are overrepresented in general. If you feel that there's a problem of systemic bias, then the solution is to expand the list with people from groups you feel are underrepresented. pburka (talk) 20:22, 19 September 2022 (UTC)

I think the fundamental problem is that is it fairly trivial to document slaveholding by Americans - there are wills, newspapers, biographies, etc., and they are all in English and many are even on the net. Trying to document slavery in other times and places can be a lot harder. So, the article can't help but give the impression that historical slavery was mostly a thing of the American South.Brianyoumans (talk) 17:51, 20 September 2022 (UTC)

Perhaps someone could add a few words explaining this to the lead of the list, if we can do so in a way that avoids WP:OR and WP:SELFREF. pburka (talk) 18:47, 20 September 2022 (UTC)